They call it "the Diamond"—a 1,000-ft. slab of granite that slants out from the mountainside like a giant teetering tombstone, and guards the eastern approach to Longs Peak, a 14,256-ft. tower in the Rockies some 75 miles northwest of Denver. The stretch of rock is one of the last great unconquered climbs in the U.S.* Last week a pair of seasoned climbers from California checked their gear and set out to become the first men to mount the Diamond.
For two hours Dave Rearick, 28, a Ph.D. in mathematics from Caltech, and Bob Kamps, 26, a fourth-grade teacher in North Hollywood, stood on a ledge called Broadway and studied the wall looming over their heads. Then Rearick began the ascent. It took him half an hour to reach a narrow shelf 75 ft. up and toss down a rope for Kamps. From then on, their progress was measured in hours and inches. At dusk, they huddled on a tiny ledge, drove pitons into the sheer rock face and dozed through a night of wind and cold, lashed to the Diamond. At dawn, they struggled on.
Because of the outward slant of the Diamond, the pair had to use "tension climbing," searching the expanse of crumbling granite for solid spots, hammering in pitons to build a ladder of rope and expansion belts. Sudden gushes of icy water down crevasses drenched them repeatedly. At times they dangled in space 20 ft. out from the face of the Diamond. As they fought their way up, the acoustics of the mountain carried wisps of their comments to the gathering crowd below: "Say, I think it's getting colder again." Dusk of the second day found them precariously camped on a ledge 4 ft. long and 15 in. wide, wolfing down salami, boned chicken and chocolate before bracing themselves for another sleepless, terrifying night.
The last 350 ft. were brutal. Clawing up a narrow chimney, Kamps was blocked by a huge chock stone, an 80-ft. splinter of granite that had fallen from above and plugged the passageway. With infinite care, he inched his way to the left. After an hour's work, he drove a piton into the rock, hooked a finger through the piton's eye and leaned dizzily backwards to search for a route above. Down below, the spectators stopped talking. Somehow the climbers found a way up the face, around the chock stone, and back into the chimney again. Some 45 minutes later Rearick's crew-cut head slowly appeared over the rim of the Diamond. Another ten minutes and both men were wearily standing together on the top.
"We might have quit except we burned our bridges behind us when we pulled most of our pitons," said Rearick. "We could never have gotten back down to Broadway." Then he made a terse entry in the logbook at the summit of Longs Peak: "First ascent of the Diamond."
* Considered so difficult that the National Park Service has refused all applicants until this year, though Longs Peak itself has been climbed innumerable times by other routes.